Chile is in the WHO’s stage 4 of the pandemic, meaning the transmission of the virus among the community has become uncontrolled and widespread (WHO, 2009). Santiago’s metropolitan area, where nearly half of the Chilean population reside, was the seed of the infection in the country, as the middle and upper class returned from Europe and Asia from their annual holidays (February 2020). However, lack of prevention, control, monitoring and leads to the spread of the virus. On March 19th, Chile was put under “State of emergency” and curfew. So far, 16 municipalities are under compulsory militarized quarantine, including the administrative capitals of El Ñuble, Los Lagos, and Araucania which are important food-producing regions. However, the government declared agriculture an “essential work” except for the production of liquor and flowers. Therefore, agricultural workers can keep labouring under special permits requested by the employer, either small or large companies. The Ministry of Agriculture has recommended measures to ensure the health of the agricultural workers, such as social distancing, the provision of face mask, and alcohol gel, but these are not mandatory (Ministerio de Agricultura, 2020).
Chile is a net exporter of fruits, wine, and timber products. Farm products are exported mainly to the USA (23%) and China (15%) (The Growth Lab at Harvard University, 2018). Cereals and foraging plants account for 24.1% of the area planted, while fruits account for 14.6%. Today agriculture and forestry sectors employ 8.4% of the national population (ODEPA, 2020). However, agricultural land is highly concentrated: 69% of the area are plots with larger than 2000 hectares (INE, 2007). The production system first requires, produce picking in the fields, and later transport, processing and, in some cases, exporting. Produce picking in the fields is outsourced to a middleman who brings in the labour, who usually are migrants and women. Women usually work as temporeras picking fruits such as grapes and apples for a season, switching products according to the season, returning to their homes after all the collecting over. Official statistics indicate an increase of 35% in foreign labour between 2015 and 2017, mostly from Haiti. There are no official statistics about the situation of migrant workers. This is the most exploited and exposed people because there are no contracts and enforcement of the sanitary conditions, yet they have to move between different geographical areas. In some fundos fruit picking has been rushed pushing temporary workers to work long hours without social distancing as ANAMURI declared (2020). The government announced a plan for employment protection for those economic sectors locked due to mandatory quarantine measures. However, that excludes the agricultural sector because it is an essential sector. Subsistence farmers I contacted -dwellers of mountainous areas- are aware of the situation and luckily have already finished their autumn food stocking, therefore do not plan to leave their fields for months. However, most of the people in the countryside are elders, and the public health system is very precarious, therefore the situation tends to be much more complex.
Middle to large agribusiness launched a campaign “we don’t stop because of you”, #noparamosporti and “farms don’t stop” #elcamponopara. Large agribusinesses represented by the Fruit federation (FEDEFRUTA) are concerned about the possible lack of labour to pick the remaining fruits in the coming weeks. FEDEFRUTA requested to the government to “provide airplanes from China to ensure strategic chains of production” (Fedefruta, 2020)
Another concern is the urban low-income households. Physical access to supermarkets is much harder in poor areas. During the social upheaval in October 2019, many supermarkets and shops were burnt. Therefore, many people now have to use public transport to get to bigger but distant supermarkets, where there are supplies of cheaper goods than those in smaller shops. Bread is Chile’s main food staple. However, most of the bread production requires imported wheat which is getting increasingly expensive due to the relative increase in the dollar price, which will probably hit other imported food. Bread makers seem unwilling to switch to domestic wheat, despite its lower price because it produces lower yields. This is part of an overall tendency of food-price increase that is hitting more harshly the most vulnerable families. The Chilean government, based on a system of socioeconomic classification, has a one-time payment of US$60 per family to support the 60% of the most vulnerable families. Currently, one kilo of bread costs US$1.5. In parallel, social organizations, such as ANAMURI, are organizing themselves to buy large quantities of food and distribute it among their members and even considering barter practices to exchange products among different geographical areas.
The Covid-19 pandemic hit Chilean agriculture amidst a ten-year severe drought, which has also increased food prices even at farmers markets. The drought is worsened by a rigid governance system based on severe water privatization and water rights concentration. This governance system has enabled the exploitation of underground water aquifers and rivers for industrial production. Before the pandemic began, at least 47.2% of people in rural areas did not have stable access to water in Chile. According to Greenpeace, 350,000 people in the countryside do not have enough water to even wash their hands during the day – like this series of videos shows. Meanwhile, avocado producers and other water-demanding producers have their own private water pools (Picture attached). The state of emergency ensures the legal powers to seize private water rights to provide basic needs for Chileans, however, the Piñera administration seems unwilling to use such power.
References
ANAMURI. (2020). Comunicado público Abuso Laboral hacia las y los trabajadores de Fundo Verónica. Santa Maria, San Felipe.
Fedefruta. (2020, marzo 25). Chile: Industria frutícola preocupada por disponibilidad de mano de obra -. PortalFruticola.com. https://www.portalfruticola.com/noticias/2020/03/25/chile-industria-fruticola-preocupada-por-disponibilidad-de-mano-de-obra/
INE. (2007). Cambios estructurales en la agricultura chilena: Análisis intercensal 1976-1997-2007. Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) Santiago.
Ministerio de agricultura. (2020, marzo). Covid-19. FUCOA. https://www.fucoa.cl/covid-19/
ODEPA. (2020). Estadísticas ODEPA. ODEPA | Oficina de Estudios y Políticas Agrarias. http://www.odepa.gob.cl
The Growth Lab at Harvard University. (2018, mayo 2). The Atlas of Economic Complexity [Database]. http://atlas.cid.harvard.edu/explore/?country=42&partner=undefined&product=146&productClass=HS&startYear=undefined&target=Product&year=1995WHO. (2009). Current WHO phase of pandemic alert for Pandemic (H1N1). WHO; World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/phase/en/
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Daniela Manuschevich
Daniela Manuschevich is assistant professor at the Geography Department in Universidad de Chile in Santiago. Her background is in biology and ecosystem ecology conservation. Then, she received her PhD from the State University of New York at the college of Environmental. She is conducting research on land use change and tree farm expansion. She is a Fulbright scholar and member of the International Society of Ecological Economics. Her most important publications are; From the Holocene to the Anthropocene: A historical framework for land cover change in southwestern South America in the past 15,000 years and Simulating land use changes under alternative policy scenarios for conservation of native forests in south-central Chile both published in Land Use Policy, as well as Neoliberalization of forestry discourses in Chile published in Forest, Policy and Economics. She recently has been working with peasants living at the fringes of tree farms expansion in the Araucania region. Her email address is danielamanuschevich@uchile.cl
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